


Little You Know

by fatalfoxtrot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Depressing, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatalfoxtrot/pseuds/fatalfoxtrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a short one-shot of unrequited love: Remus is in love with Sirius, who is either oblivious or doesn't love him back (take your pick, I made it ambiguous).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little You Know

_O YOU whom I often and silently come where you are,_  
 _that I may be with you,  
 _As I walk by your side, or sit near, or remain in the  
 _same room with you,  
 _Little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake  
 _is playing within me._____ _-Walt Whitman_

* * *

  
Remus sat in front of the roaring fire of the Gryffindor Common Room, head crouched anxiously over the Herbology essay due the next day. It was a quarter to midnight, and having spent the day studying for the variety of tests that the Hogwarts professors somehow suspiciously assigned within the same week, Remus had spent the remainder of it working on one-thousand word’s worth of information on the history, current uses, and dangers of the Chinese Chomping Cabbage. He was two-hundred words away from finishing when his keen hearing registered the slight noise of someone entering the portrait hole, however didn’t turn around until he picked up the scent of who had entered.  
“Slaving away the entire night on homework, Moony?” Sirius all but shouted from the other side of the room. Remus smiled. He hadn’t seen his friend all day; he was a welcome break from reading about the nasty infections one can get from a certain Chinese vegetable.  
“Only because I seem to care about the grades I make, Padfoot.” As Sirius made his way forward, Remus’s nose instinctively curled up in disgust. There’s that foreign, perfumy smell of Hawking again. He tried not to let the dislike show on his face, as Sirius had been seeing this girl since the beginning of term and seemed to be happy with her. Such was not the case with Remus. He hated every second he’d had to spend the past four months watching them together: the way they snogged in Muggle Studies when Professor Heintz wasn’t paying attention, how she’d sneak over from the Ravenclaw table to eat with Sirius at breakfast and sit on his lap, when Sirius would arrive after spending hours with her, such as tonight, smelling of fake roses and bubblegum lipgloss (and Remus knew it was bubblegum, his heightened sense of smell could pick up a range of lipgloss flavors). Perhaps the worst part of it was the fact that Lucy Hawking was one of the sweetest girls one could encounter, and was never anything but kind and lovely to Remus and the other Mauraders. It made Remus guilty to have such a strong aversion to the girl, but really, how could he feel anything but envy towards when he coveted the time she spent with Sirius so heavily?  
Remus watched as his friend approached the wide couch he was sitting on, throwing himself down in a very Sirius-like fashion, with much gusto and charm. It made another small part of Remus’s twitch… and then ache. Already the scent of Hawking was fading, with Sirius’s mixture of musk and cinnamon was becoming all the more potent. _I’m in too deep, and yet again I can do nothing to help it._  
“I wanted to get back here sooner to study myself, surprisingly enough, but I had Quidditch practice ‘til seven, then Lucy caught me afterwards.” Remus was praying that the current topic of the conversation would stop there, but had no such luck.  
“She snogs like a madman, that one. I can only hope you’ll find a girl that likes to makeout with half as much enthusiasm as she does, I swear,” Sirius remarked, kicking his legs back onto the couch and resting his head on Remus’s lap, completely disrupting his work. Remus battled with letting Sirius stay in that position, if only so he could pretend to himself it was a romantic and affectionate gesture, but he really needed to finish his essay.  
“Padfoot, if you wouldn’t mind,” Remus shook his paper in front of Sirius’s face. “I have about two-hundred more words to write on the Chinese Chomping Cabbage.”  
“You’d rather spend the rest of your night with lettuce than your best friend?” Sirius flashed his highly seductive puppy dog eyes, and Remus wanted more than anything to tell him _no, that he’d rather spend the rest of every night with his best friend-turned-boyfriend_ , but knew he couldn’t.  
“I’d rather spend the night finishing up our Herbology mid-term assignment with my friend not completely in my lap.” How thick of a lie that was.  
Sirius huffed, sitting up straight and turning around so that he was in the same position as Remus on the opposite end of the couch. Remus got back to writing, occasionally looking up from his paper to gather the last bits of research he would need to wrap up his conclusion. It was twenty or so minutes later when Remus wrapped up the final sentence of his paper, and noticed the scent of Hawking had all but faded from Sirius. Turning around, he could also see the last bits of consciousness had all but faded from Sirius as well. He was sleeping, and sleeping so peacefully and beautifully that Remus couldn’t help to simultaneously smile and feel his heart break.  
 _I can’t keep doing this_ , he thought, for quite literally the millionth time in over a year. Stealing one-sided moments would do nothing but make his heart ache and his loneliness fester and grow. Whether it was watching Sirius sleep when he would pass out in the Common Room, or pretend he was in Hawking’s position when they would snog in the Great Hall, or warping something Sirius said in a rare, affectionate moment to fit a romantic agenda, Remus knew that it would break him that much more.  
Getting up from the couch, Remus crouched in front of the boy he was in love with.  
“Sirius… Sirius,” Remus quietly whispered, gently shaking Sirius as to wake him up with care. “Sirius, you fell asleep.”  
“WhtimeisitamIlateforsomethin?” He yawned out, causing Remus to smile the dopey smile he got whenever Sirius inadvertently did something cute. _If he wasn’t so goddamn perfect…_  
“No Padfoot, you just fell asleep under the fire. Time to go on up to the dorm.”  
“Mmm…”  
Sirius was only half awake when he got up to climb the stairs to the dorms, and as a result, Remus had to support him most of the way. As they climbed up the steps one by one, Remus breathed in the scent of his best friend. He held on perhaps a little too tightly, probably shouldn’t have gone to all the trouble of tucking him into bed, and definitely should not have brushed the hair away from Sirius’s face, fingers lingering too long.  
Remus crawled into his own bed, and lay there. His ears picked up Sirius’s snores that others wouldn’t have heard. The light from the moon was coming in through the window, a full moon would be upon him tomorrow. Remus was feeling too bad for himself to even shut his curtains, the frightening glow of the moon only added to the misery he was basking in.  
And so he lay there, the electricity he felt upon having touched Sirius still shooting through his veins, and tried not to cry himself to sleep.


End file.
